Eskimo Callboy first exploded onto the internet thanks to viral sensation “Is Anyone Up,” five years ago. The song, named after an anonymous revenge porn website, which featured astoundingly insensitive lyrics like: “your pussy, your boobies, on the world wide web,” and “I’ve lost my ability to infatuate hot chicks,” crooned in a voice-distorting autotune, remains their biggest (and best) track.
Five years on, Eskimo Callboy use the word ‘fuck,’ twice in the opening twenty seconds of their fourth record, the comically over-the-top “The Scene”. The band have shown little (if any) progression in the last half-decade, instead preferring to pump out mindless synth accompanied deathcore tracks.The chorus to opening song “Back In The Bizz,” goes on to exclaim “what we made will last forever,” a fact that rings, unfortunately, true. For the rest of human history, we will all have to accept that not only did the six members of the band think that this album worth releasing, so did several record execs.
It is plain to see that Eskimo Callboy do not understand dance music. They use it cheaply, without nuance or skill. As far as crossover records go, this is not The Prodigy. This is not Bring Me the Horizon or Enter Shikari. This is not even Attack Attack! The ‘drop’, such as it is, on track two, “MC Thunder”, uses dubstep wubs not seen outside of naff metal-dance-cash-in acts since 2012.
The band fail thoroughly at capturing what it is that makes their influences interesting. Indeed, “The Scene“ sounds utterly lifeless, as though Garage Band had become sentient and created what it saw as the ideal ‘crossover’ music. Drums are triggered, vocals are auto-tuned to the point of no return and the guitars have no bite or aggression; they’re drop tuned, sure, but the sound is so processed it sounds offensively bland rather than heavy.
Still, the worst part of the album comes on track ten, “New Age,” with a chorus lifted straight from an early career Black Veil Brides tune and production that wouldn’t sound out of place on the worst Linkin Park albums, the clean singing on this track is some of the most stale released this year.
The usual advice for this kind of act would be to embrace either their dance or metal influences full on – there are successful examples on both sides of this coin. Yet Eskimo Callboy fail so thoroughly at achieving either of these aims on “The Scene,” that the only advice there is to give is simply: stop.
Eskimo Callboy’s The Scene is out now on Century Media Records.
